[2] He also completed a Post-graduate Diploma in Social Anthropology at University College London between 1975 and 1977, and conducted field ethnographic research resulting in several academic publications.
Between 2006 and his retirement in 2014, Turner was the director of the Department of Neurophysics, which he established at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
[3] In the 1980s, he worked with distinguished scientists including 2003 Nobel Prize winner Sir Peter Mansfield to produce a mathematical framework for MRI coil design which was crucial to the development of ultra-fast echoplanar imaging (EPI).
[8] The technique also lies at the heart of diffusion tensor imaging, a method for non-invasive study of connecting pathways within the brain's white matter.
[10][11] This led to the discovery, made in collaboration with noted researcher Kenneth Kwong[12] that EPI could accurately track within seconds the local changes in blood oxygenation in human brain (BOLD) caused by task-related neural activity.
[16] These findings led to an explosion of interest in fMRI, which depends almost entirely on the use of EPI to investigate human brain function, and the subsequent development of what has come to be known as Imaging Neuroscience.
His work there centred on the quest to gain more precise knowledge of the structure and function of the human brain, by using more powerful MRI scanners and improved hardware and methodology.